Book Chapter

Towards a new history of old mobility: obstacles and prospects

  • Wouter Ryckbosch

A new wave of empirical and data-driven studies on the history of social mobility in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period has been emerging in recent years. This trend bears some resemblance to the wave of historical inequality studies that successfully changed the consensus of long-run trends in inequality in the past decade. In this short reflection, I argue that there are important obstacles to overcome before a similar consensus in the field of historical mobility studies can be reached. Pre-modern historians should be careful to distinguish between different types of mobility, should take contemporary perceptions of social ambition or fear into account, and should Always specify which social groups their results apply to.

  • Keywords:
  • social mobility,
  • history of inequality,
  • early modern history,
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Wouter Ryckbosch

VUB, Free University of Brussels, Belgium - ORCID: 0000-0003-0269-4950

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  • Publication Year: 2025
  • Pages: 569-579
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Towards a new history of old mobility: obstacles and prospects

Authors

Wouter Ryckbosch

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0667-9.31

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

La mobilità sociale nelle società preindustriali: tendenze, cause ed effetti (secc. XIII-XVIII) / Social mobility in pre-industrial societies: tendencies, causes and effects (13th-18th centuries)

Editors

Angela Orlandi

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

612

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0667-9

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0666-2

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0667-9

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0668-6

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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